Aside from being pestered about something that was not really a problem, and issues that arose from switching hosts, things have been going fairly well, especially when I finally get time to sit down and watch something relaxing.

As many of you know, I have been following two series this season, and along with the official change from summer to fall, or winter to spring if you live in the southern hemisphere, both series will be seeing their final four episodes this month.

Today, I will be reviewing the first of final four episodes of one of those series, which is Rewrite episode 10.

As I have given a series synopsis in an earlier post, I will not go over it again.

Kotaru and Kagari are still laying low in the forest without too much to worry about.

However, when two familiar faces belonging to one of the two groups looking for Kagari show up, things take a turn for the worse, as enemies start to hone in on their location.

Now, Kotaru must not only help Kagari find herself, but improve his fighting abilities to a point where he would not suffer from the negative side effects of his capabilities.

I am not too sure about this one.

Fortunately, there are a few things that I liked, so I do not need to skip right into the things that were not so great.

I really liked how things picked up a bit from when Gaia finally tracked down Kagari's location.

Since this is the first of the final four episodes, I would expect at least some encounters with those that might be part of the enemy faction, though probably nothing in the range of final or true boss characters that are often found in RPGs.

After all, there are many people out there that associate with one or more groups, but they may not actually be true believers in what the current cause, beliefs, or teachings of that group.

For example, in the church I attend, people are strongly encouraged to believe that everything the leaders at the top, or, if you want to flip the pyramid upside down, the bottom, says are the words of God, even trying to convince people to do things a certain way in order to resolve doubts, instead of pursuing their own path.

However, within the body of members of that church as a whole, there are people who realize the importance of doubting people, even the very leaders that they are told have been called of God, yet are still faithful to the God they know. A few of them had these feelings confirmed by both current and the now disavowed texts that came from this church, which many of the devout followers do not accept because they forget that many scripture passages can be interpreted in many different ways, otherwise there would not be as many sects as there are of the major religions of the world.

Likewise, not all of the members of Gaia are going to have the same objective as what their group espouses, otherwise Kotaru would not have gotten training sessions he did in this episode, though what they want to do with Kagari is still not entirely clear.

This really sets up a good tone for an upcoming betrayal or realization of what the truth is exactly.

As a result, I really want to give 8bit a nice thumbs up, though I would not really consider this the perfect moment to do something like this right now.

I also liked how Kotaru started to train with an old acquaintance, who knew a lot more about Kotaru's abilities than Kotaru himself.

After Kotaru manifested a new ability in episode 7, he did not really do too much experimenting with it, in order to get more used to his new abilities and not rely too much on luck and coincidences, though luck does play a huge role in strategy games and life itself, no matter whether one is optimistic or realistic.

After all, if the hero gets lucky way too often, things are no longer that interesting, and, like Touma Kamijou in A Certain Magical Index, many would want to see that person die.

Seeing him train with Sakuya, I really wonder how he is going to overcome whatever adversities that are going to come his way, though they probably will not have the same kind of emotional impact that was present when Edward Elric gave up his ability to perform alchemy so that he could get Alphonse Elric back, or even when Oz Vessalius told his father, Xai, that he no longer needed him to acknowledge his existence in Pandora Hearts Volume 22.

Hopefully, 8bit can really pull things off in the next few episodes, because things are so far going fairly well, even if it is not as seemingly perfect as Kyoto Animation's adaptation of Key's works appear to be, aside from some minor omissions.

The thing that I liked the most though was how this episode felt like it was continuing to bring the series a bit closer to the end.

If I had to say why, it would have to be because the way Lucia came to face to face with the same person that was chasing after Kagari back in episode 3 gave off the feeling that Gaia and Guardian were really going to go at each other's throats.

They are each other's worst enemies, as could be inferred by what occurred between the members of the occult club back in episode 7, and now that they finally face each other during the final four episodes make me think that there is going to be quite a bit of bloodshed and loss to come.

This will also help in being able to explore the groups abit more, though still not as much as I would have liked.

For now, I will just give 8bit a pat on the back, though with some bit of hesitance, as they are now at the part where even the smallest mistakes can hurt them the most.

Hopefully, the goals and methods of the two groups finally gets established during the events of the upcoming episodes, otherwise, this series really will become the worst of 2016, since there are some glaring issues present in this episode, which will be discussed in a bit.

Please 8bit, do something right for a change, before I begin to believe the hate that you receive is warranted, since there have been instances in this series that showed you can actually do something decent if you tried.

Because it is shows that not all members of Gaia want to kill Kagari enough to make a move and that Kotaru is learning how to fight better, as well as the fact that the episode gave off a feeling that it trying to bring things closer to an end, this episode was fairly adequate for the beginning of the end.

Although there were things that I liked about the episode, there are some issues.

First, Kotaru and Kagari seemingly gave up on trying to find out more about Kagari herself.

Kagari has appeared in just about every episode and asks for Kotaru to help her find herself, only to just stop asking questions or exploring more after Kotori answers a few questions and says that Kagari will need to decide the fate of the Earth?

Do you really expect me to be satisfied with this 8bit? You have three episodes left and you think that is enough to answer everything?

These kinds of developments should have happened during the middle portion of this series, not the during the course of the final four episodes.

Pandora Hearts did not leave the unveiling behind the truth Sablier until the final four chapters of the series.

Kenshin did not suddenly recover after he thought Kaoru had been killed by Enishi and his allies, then beat Enishi and his goons in the final four chapters of Rurouni Kenshin. Kenshin suffered grief and sorrow because he again failed to protect somebody important to him and got his resolve back because somebody still believed in him, even though many of his friends had long left him for dead.

Ledo did not suddenly assimilate into the culture he found on Gargantia in the first four episodes of Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet, returned to his commander's side, and then decide what his commander was doing was wrong in the last few episodes. Ledo had to grow accustomed to his new life on Gargantia and learn that everything he was told was a lie. What he experienced on Gargantia changed his whole outlook on things.

This is the proper way things should end, even if I am also guilty of the same crimes I am berating 8bit for in my own stories.

Right now, Kotaru should be focused on becoming a better fighter and living a peaceful life with Karagi and a few of his friends, all while trying to find out more about Kagari, not just having training that feels like a battle is about to come their way.

I guess that I was right to be leery of how 8bit would handle the final four episodes, because this series has been handled poorly for its thirteen episode run, especially when one compares this to how great Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet turned out to be, even though that series also had roughly thirteen episodes.

The only way this could have been improved is if the anime studios were not so focused on making long stories, like Rewrite's visual novel, fit twelve or thirteen episodes, and instead actually went through the story then decided how many episodes to produce.

After all, great writers are great because they write great stories, not because big name critics and the people who decide which books become classics say they are great writers, know that the natural flow of a story should be what dictates when it ends. No decent writer is ever going to say that their story will be only 7 pages long or only 7000 words long, even when they plan things out in advance like they should.

When all new anime is expected to be twelve or thirteen episodes long, quality is never going to be guaranteed, and 8bit really needs to learn this so they can create something as great as FMA Brotherhood in the future.

If they do not, they will remain a terrible studio in the eyes of fans everywhere.

I also hated how there was a bit of unnecessary comedy present in this episode.

While it is nice to have some small doses of comedy here and there, it can really ruin the flow of the story or series, when it is used improperly.

In the case of this episode, the worst offender is when Kotaru was reunited with Akane and they were going through an emotional moment, Kotaru all of the sudden decides he wants to grope Akane and makes her comply, only to pull the psych card at the last minute.

This is not funny at all, 8bit and should not have been present at all.

If I were reunited with a close friend, regardless of them being male or female, I would want to hug them, and possibly cry like Ushio and Tomoya Okazaki did after Tomoya learned that his father experiences pretty much the exact same things and feelings that Tomoya did after losing Nagisa. I would not be purposefully sexually harassing them like Kotaru did.

These guys went through a lot in the occult club and 8bit threw that all away with this scene. No wonder this series failed to give me the same kind of emotional feels that I got from Key visual novel that I have read and the incident with Shou Tucker in the 2003 anime adaptation of FMA.

8bit should be allowed to produce anime, if this is what they give people in their series.

Congratulations 8bit, you are one of the first companies around to make me feel like dropping this series, even though I am so close to the end.

Heck, even A-1 Pictures did not doing anything terrible enough to the point I wanted to give up on the anime adaptation of Boku Dake ga Inai Machi until the very last episode, and they made some terrible mistakes after the tenth episode, if not sooner.

Whatever school or masters taught 8bit how to create anime should ashamed of themselves.

The thing that I hated the most though was how this ended.

While did set things up well enough that Lucia can become yet another ally of Kotaru and Kagari and bring things closer to a close, it did not really do anything to suggest that things will be over in the next three episodes.

If anything, it felt like this was going to have a few more episodes.

Yes, things might change over the course of the next few episodes, but it really feels like 8bit did not plan things out too well.

Yet again, this is the reason why the story should determine the length of a series, instead of deciding upon a length beforehand and trying to adapt the story to that.

Seriously, 8bit appears to be more of a novice at making anime than their catalog of titles makes me want to believe.

Oh well, it is not like I care anymore, because 8bit has committed some very serious crimes in the industry of producing fiction. I do not even wish to them good luck in their endeavors of creating anime.

Please, 8bit, go back to school and learn how to produce anime properly, because that is the only way that you are ever going to improve.

While there was not too much to complain about, the fact that 8bit forgot about exploring Kagari, especially when there are so few episodes left to air, ruined an atmosphere that could have been very emotional with unnecessary comedy, and made this series feel like it was going to last longer than it will made this 8bit's worse work yet.

Despite the fact that there were things that I liked, the few negatives that existed outweighed the good enough that it was a waste of time.

If this episode was not the one laying the foundation for the end, I would have been happy enough to strongly recommend avoiding this like the plague, but because this is the first of the final four episodes, it might be better to view this one, if you plan to watch until the end and are a fan of Rewrite.

As for everyone else, I strongly recommend not even bothering with this series.

What are your thoughts on Rewrite episode 10? Did you like it or hate it? If you hated the episode and saw 8bit's other works, do you agree that this was one of the worst episodes they produced or do you think that this is not bad enough to displace their most hated series? Was there something that you liked or hated that went unmentioned? Feel free to comment.

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